1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to an electronic device and a method thereof, and more particularly, to a method and an electronic device for accelerating multimedia streaming.
2. Description of the Related Art
Multimedia streaming services are provided by many websites. The distribution of personal portable terminals allows people to easily use multimedia contents via the multimedia streaming services, even in outdoor spaces. The demand for multimedia content having high image quality and high capacity is increasing.
Methods for transmitting media data via a network are classified into a download method and a streaming method. In the streaming method, a server transmits media data in real-time, and a client reproduces received media data in real-time. Specifically, the streaming method relates to technology for giving and taking multimedia content including audio/video, while not downloading the content. The streaming technology does not download and process information at one time, but instead continuously receives information sufficient for processing on a packet basis. Accordingly, a user does not need to download all of the multimedia content at one time.
Unlike the download method of starting reproduction of media data after the transmitting/receiving of the media data, the streaming method transmits/receives media data in real-time via a communication channel set between a server and a client, thereby reproducing the multimedia data. Particularly, since a greater amount of data than general content should be transmitted in real-time for reproduction of high image quality contents, a buffering phenomenon may frequently occur during streaming reproduction. For this reason, a method and an apparatus for increasing a streaming speed to allow a user to view multimedia contents without disconnection are desired.